Live in Light

Feeling into resistance

Today I find myself on day 3 of my resolution to blog every day.   

Already I’m fighting with the old pattern of self talk:  get busy with other things,  you’ve already seen two clients - have a break;  remember to hang out the washing and while you're there, the toilet could do with a clean;   you started that book a while back and haven’t finished it - you’ve got an hour between appointments so go read a chapter. 

Ooh. So many ways to fall into a spiral and distract myself. 

I’m recognising and breathing into this old pattern of feeling resistance with writing.  It’s an interesting thing to pause and observe.   I can feel my old undercurrent and survival patterns working overdrive to get me to stop. 

My resistance is saying what the (bleep) were you thinking publicly committing to 31 days of writing.  No one will care if you just stop and have a day off. 

My survival mode is saying - stop now, don’t embarrass yourself.

My genetics say who the (Bleep) are you to write stuff.   It’s been said for millennia already - you’ve read  Rumi and Confucius.   You’re not in their league.  (Ah, the grandmothers of yesteryear attempting to keep me small, at home and looking after babies).

The little girl in me is remembering writing at primary school.  Horror!   I was always in the bottom of the class for spelling.  The daily writing requirement was torture.   How do you express phenomenal concepts and insight that flow in constant awareness when the dictionary doesn’t help with important words like skul (school) and konstint (constant) and kwer (queer).   Actually what I learned back then as an 8 - 10 year old is that writing is overrated,   dictionaries are a waste of time as they don’t contain the words I need, and the belief systems I internalised that "I'm dumb", "I can't write" and "keep quiet".  

(It wasn’t till years later that I realised the dictionary did have those words.   And that I no longer need to be bound by the beliefs formed as a young child.   As you can see from todays blog, I'm recognising aspects of those beliefs that I'm still transforming!) 

I learned to edit what I wanted to say to the most basic written form. 

In my mind I would describe shades of colour of moonlight reflecting on clouds; expansive awareness reflecting on a day’s adventure and play at the beach.   A deep connection as I leaned my head into the window to see the stars on the night time drive home,  tummy full of fish cooked on the bonfire.  Feeling safer expanding into the into stars than remembering the water at the beach.   (Somehow I could feel the other shores, foreign land and beings living in the water and it felt confusing.   I used to imagine that these beings were literally swimming around me.  It wasn’t until I was an adult that I understood I was feeling the expansive connection that can come with water.)  I would feel the awareness that we all are made up of bits of star dust and wonder how that looked in my body. Did I glow like a star?

Yet at school my capacity to write would be: I went to the beach. We had a fire.

So what am I doing as an adult committing to 31 days of writing.  Am I insane?

The ego part of me is going it will be good to push past the old fear, release the 9 year old school girl. 

And my Unconditional loving soul aspect is going … have fun showing up, being authentic, being true. 

So what am I doing…

1. Breathing all the way into my feet and the earth
2. Laughing. 
3. Letting my 9 year old self know that actually as a 50 something, it really doesn’t matter if I can spell.  (Yes it did to the person who wrote and phoned to blast me that I hadn’t edited something properly but that’s their stuff and I don’t need to take it on)
4. Feel so much gratitude that I now live in a time with spell check and auto typing  (even if it does get it wrong sometimes)
5. Remind myself that being done is better than being perfect  (I so know that.  I have 100’s of articles I’ve written that are 3/4 complete waiting for the “perfect”)
6. Bring compassion to the parts of me, my ancestors and the collective that felt they had to hide, be small or invisible as a way of surviving.
7. Bring gratitude to those who have gone before me who have shown up with their writings and wisdom so I could learn and grow.
8. Remember those who are to come whom I have agreed to help by showing up now.  The other day my meditation took me to future ancestors who were able to stand on my shoulders.   I could feel their gratitude for what they were able to see and do because of what I am doing now.
9. When I feel into that its a no brainer.   Write this - the washing will still be there to hang out.